The recommissioning of / full restoration of Frank the R5GTT

[Mr_Phill]

Once up on a time in a galaxy far, far away, just outside Mold in North Wales, there lived a bloke who had some money burning a hole in his pocket.....

Herein lies a thread about my on going battle with Frank The *******, My R5GTT.
Former rally car, and God knows what else before that.
Sold to me on the premise it needed 'recommissioning' and came with loads of spares worth thousands.
I discovered i have an ability to polish turds. And one mans collection of spares could well be, just a pile of %$£*

Ill try and keep on top of this thread but ive been at it since January, the highs, the lows, bear with me!

[Mr_Phill]

This is how It arrived. Laid up for 9 or 10 years. Not running, not seized, just sleeping. Last time it ran, it won its class in the ANWCC Stage Rally Championships.
Looked a bit mental, and i wanted to run it in Road Rallies, so taking it back to stock ish looking was the goal.

[Mr_Phill]

[Mr_Phill]

First on the list, got it running. Didnt take a lot. The carb had been de-choked, so a quick lesson on throttle control to keep it running till it warmed up was needed. Chokes?! what are they?
Ran fairly well, ever so slight blue haxe filled the garage after 20 mins. Figured itd need a good thrashing to clear it out at some point. But not right now, so on with the bodywork and interior...
Outside, i started on the front end. ditch the small headlights and fit stock ones. And a bumper with less holes in.
Started to look better already Just that huge intercooler sticking out. Wasnt too keen on the bonnet pins either... Switched to working on the inside, i needed to fit seats, or just one at least.
Rules had changed in Road Rallying, so i wasnt allowed a vertical bar handbrake. When i tried it, it leaked like a bitch, so off it came, and fitted a nice new hydro handbrake, alongside a stock cable handbrake. Brake bias valve refitted too.

[Mr_Phill]

I like jumping from one thing to the next, so logically i started on the rear of teh car, and suspension, and trial fitting the bumper. and skirts...
Also Found a set of alloys from a clio that i could use, came with decentish tyres all for 100 quid. Looked ok so went with them.

[Mr_Phill]

next i turned my attention back to the engine. and why it kept hazing out the garage. Thought since it was a motorsports thrasher, the turbo may have seen better days, so off it came.
And i was somewhat right....

Never seen a wastegate look like that before, plenty of oil leaking. So went through all the spares, found 3 turbos. All of which had cracked waste gates. Some less so than others, so bit the bullet and thought id repair it myself.
Looked like the T2 used fairly high nickel content cast iron for the turbine housings, so reckoned i could weld it back up with too much issues, if i took precautions.
So i picked the housing with the least amount of cracks in (2 cracks) and set about fixing it.
Drilled out the cracks at either end, then ground out the rest with a dremmel and carbide bit.
The white powder is Dye Penetrant, used to welding fault detection. Great at finding cracks and how far they go
Once drilled out, it was given a bath in my ultrasonic tank.
It was after the cleaning i discovered to my horror another few cracks. Urgh, so out came the dye pen... and drilled it all out again, rinse and repeat.
After finding out how much cast iron rods were and a huge amount of contradictory information the interwebs, i got the mig out, pre heated the casting to 275c and migged the housing up. kept applying heat so it wouldnt cool too quickly and peened the living shit out of it to prevent stress fractures. This was whilst wrapped in a brazing mat, to help keep it hot. After welding and peening was done, i kept the heat in with a mapp torch, and laser temp sensor, only allowing it to cool a couple of degrees a minute.
having 4 arms would have helped here...

[Mr_Phill]

So once cooled, gave it an inspection and started the long process of dremmeling off the excess weld and making it look respectable.

and the waste gate area after some dremmel action...

[Mr_Phill]

While its off....you know that old phrase? While its off, i may as well.....
Yeah that happened, so great idea, keep temps down in the engine bay, always a good idea, so bought some glass tape and went for it.

back to the turbo, while its in bits, i may as well.....sandblast the compressor housing and ceramic coat it.


and the finished article, quite pleased

[Mr_Phill]

So bolted it all back together wired up and hit go!
Awesome! No leaks! Forgot to mention i also fitted new seals and a 360 degree bearing to the turbo.
So there it ran, all nice, but whats that slight blue haze still??
So one of my mates suggested i run a compression test.
Fair enough says I. Lets do it.
145 psi, 100psi, 100psi, 70psi.

Oh for F%£$ sake.

To be continued...

[Mr_Phill]

So there it was, the reason behind the hazy blue atmosphere when the engine was running. Not just down to the turbo being a bit cracked up. Tried the compression test dry, then with a splurge of oil in the bores to see if it was just valves, but no, twas mainly rings.
So out came the engine.
Not got many pictures of this bit because i was fuming and flat out with work.
Id did however have a ponder.
The car came with a spare engine. Allegedly a peach. Just rebuilt, and fresh, race tuned. The turbo let go, and thats the only reason it was being sold (to the bloke i bought everything off).
Now it had crossed my mind, do i just throw in this other lump, its a winner, crisp.
Or do i not trust a damn thing anyone says and tear the frigger apart and check it out?

Well the latter.
Id been bitten a bit too much by this car already, so with his new name of Frank the B'stard, i set to ripping the 'new' engine apart.
First thing i noticed, sump being held on with bathroom silicone sealant....took the sump off....


Yeah, thats an interesting one. What followed was an expletive ridden rant for about an hour as more and more was uncovered.
Basically the numbnuts who rebuilt this, had used no gaskets anywhere, just silicone. Which wasnt oil resistant. and has dissolved and been drawn through the entire block and oilways.
Yeah the turbo had blown, now we know why.
All bearings were shot. Every single one. So the engine was cheese.
Pistons looked ok tho, so pulled em, flat tops, low comp, figured they would be handy so stuck them in the parts washer. All was looking well until the ring lands fell off one piston!

Ok back to the drawing board.

Edit: you may notice in the above picture, the oil remains on the block. Its grey. Bearing material.

[Mr_Phill]

All i could do now was try and salvage what i could.

The liners in engine 2 were in good shape (compared to the worn out ones in engine 1), so picked those.
Pistons from engine one were looking ok, so new rings ordered.
Cam from engine one looked good and also a different profile from the one in engine two. So used Cam 1.
Crank from engine 1 also pretty good, bearing wear was minimal, unlike engine 2.
Reuse the block from engine 1.
And we was good to go. After a good cleaning and de carbon, plenty of chemicals, rehoned the liners, fitted the rings, head strip and examine, valve relap, seat cleanup and put it back together.

[Mr_Phill]

Next thing was the flywheel and clutch, now the flywheel from engine 1 was light. really light. and looked like it had been worked. Balanced etc. So put that back on.


The clutch had seen better days, Helix motorsport 4 paddle. And at the time i did find a new clutch from 'techniclutch' in the boxes of spares, so threw that on.
Subsequently discovered techniclutch are apparently cheese. So ill get the helix relined and put that back on at some point in the future. once the techni has blown up of course

[Mr_Phill]

Next was to throw the rebuilt engine back on the car, went in ok.
I stood back and looked at it, something didnt seem quite right, it was then i realised what was wrong.
The ENTIRE front end had holes cut in it, presumably for cooling. And a lot was missing.
The slam panel was so thin and flexible it had no structural strength at all and was bent beyond belief.
I ordered a new slam panel, then put one above the other for comparison....


Bit hard to make out maybe, but bear with me.
You can see how much had been cut out and removed.
Theyd even hole sawed through the bloody chassis!!!! Who the? what the!?

[Mr_Phill]

ill quit waffling and get on with it....

I was pissed right off.
And plated the front of the chassis with 3 mil plate in one hit. bang.
Welded in the new slam panel.
Made a new inner chassis/wing support bit from flat sheet.
Welded everything that should not move. Turns out the nearside chassis leg was held to the front end by one 1" weld. Everything else was cut off or rusted through.
The car was a death trap.

[Mr_Phill]

So that was the structural work on the front end done.
Now to address the pigs arse of the wiring inside.
Pretty much all of the original loom had been hacked to buggery, all lights, indicators, horn, wash wipe, you name it, was on toggle switches.
The dash was a sorry state. holes everywhere, cracked, ripped, torn, you name it.
Underneath it was worse, the wires changed colour due to many crimp connectors, splicing 3 or 4 inch bits of wire together to make one long one. it went on.


Again i lost my rag, ripped out the dash (what was left of it) and with it the wiring loom.
There was no way id waste more time trying to rectify the bodges.

Whilst i was ripping it out, i saw a line of what looked like silicone sealer...again. In the offside scuttle.

So pulled it out, oh. It didnt lead to Narnia as id hoped.
So 10 mins later...

And then, after cutting off the pedal box and steering column.....



half an hour laters...

[Matt Cole]

Brilliant project thread this Phil!

Some work going into that, and i can appreciate the pain your feeling.

Keep us informed.

[Ian S]

If you're able to measure it, this might help determine which cam you have: https://www.rtoc.org/cam/

[Mr_Phill]

Apologies for no updates, run into a problem. Big problem.
Currently working on the bodywork, attempting to get the lines spot on, nothing seemed to be lining up properly on the front end.
Found out last night at 10pm what the issue was.
When i setup and welded in the front slam panel, i was a bit out. around 1/2 an inch on one side, in 2 planes. And the offside (inner wing/chassis leg?) is slightly splayed out by half an inch.
So everything i welded up has to come off, while me and me mate work out which bit of the car is straight, and therefore gives us a base to work from.
Having that R5 TL next to it in the garage is helping with measurements, but ffs, im struggling to see this ever ending at the moment.

Trying to work out how i went wrong with the panel, i just remember there not being much to go on when it came to working out where the spot welds should go to fix it all together.
Most the original panel had either been cut away or rusted out.

Come to think of it, i had to fabricate a third of the offside inner wing/leg from scratch because it just didn't exist. But the other two thirds, back towards the screen are splayed out, which makes the bit i made worse. I just followed the line.
This has only come to light when we fitted the bonnet.

I've no words of wisdom here, or advice, except don't buy an ex competition car.
See what the next couple of days bring.

[Mr Raider]

Certainly a challenge, all be worth it in the end, great work mate